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Joined: Sep 2021
Posts: 3
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Joined: Sep 2021
Posts: 3
Hello Everyone,

I am new to this forum and so happy I came across it. It has been a tremendous help better understand what I am going through and navigating this emotional rollercoaster. At this point I need some advise on how to handle my marriage moving forward.

Here is my story.

My husband and I have been married 13 years with 2 kids 9 and 10. We both got married late in life and had a short courtship. My husband said many times that from the moment he met me I was the one (i wonder if that was just on paper since i never felt much passion) . He chased me but i was never really crazy about him (truthfully he wasn't my type). At that time I was getting over a break up with someone I was in love with so I couldn't really "see" my husband in his true light. Of course I grew to really care about him and we got married, it was a short courtship. My husband has many issues. He has a hard time dealing with any stress, has a short temper and addictions issues. For most of the marriage he had been an alcoholic and since I was pretty lonely and resentful I couldn't provide him with the admiration, affection etc he craved. I resolved myself to only focusing on the kids but our fights began to escalate where we would blame each other for everything. Our marriage was very disconnected, and our sex life was mediocre (according to me sex once or twice a month is not enough).

In 2019 he quit drinking, went on anti-anxiety medication and 6 months later started a physical and emotional affair with a younger women at work. The background with this women is that they knew each other from the gym 5 years back, kept in touch (met for a lunch a few times and he set her up with a friend of his) and then hired her at his company requiring them to work closely together. All this went down without my knowledge. The story gets more interesting, according to my husband and his friends she was always infatuated with him which she expressed but he had always told her he loved his wife, He made the first move. The worst part was that during his affair he was horrible to me, fighting with me about anything and everything and making my life miserable. In hindsight there were very few tell tale signs since he incorporarted the affair into his daily routine. The only evidence was the fighting, the narcassism and more frequent sex life. In my subconscious I must have realized what was happening because I was kept telling him I'm having nightmares he's cheating on me. .

Well finally 7 months later in February I found out by catching him in a lie and he partially confessed. I was devastated that someone i shared my life with could deceive me like that. I was livid that during this time my children and I had to endure his horrible treatment and mood swings. All the while i was taking care of the family, including starting a new career (I was doing extremely well financially). So he begged and pleaded with me not to leave him downplaying everything etc. and he promised he would change as a dad, husband and a person. I believed him and began to feel all this new passion for him and our relationship trying to see this as a wake call, that we will be embarking on a new chapter in our marriage. I blamed myself for not being a better wife to him. Naively, i thought maybe this would bring us closer. I started working out and taking better care of myself (Conventionally speaking i am beautiful/pretty and most men consider me hot - sorry don't mean to brag but just saying its not an attraction issue since he always thought i was beautiful but hey its all in the eyes of the beholder).

This is a long story with many ups and downs that I will try to make as short as possible but with enough detail to give you the full picture. So here is the synaposis is:
March
1 month after i first found out about the affair, we went into lockdown and during this time I thought we were in recovery but he continued to lie to me. In fact for the next 6 months till September they continued talking and sleeping with each other albeit not at the same frequency since it was riskier now that I had discovered the affair. During this time I did not trust him and was checking his phone constantly, but he was calling her when i was sleeping when he was in his car and then deleting everything.

May
We are in quarantine at our vacation home. He leaves our quarantine (1 hour away) for a change of scenery to work. I send a friend over to check on his car and it's missing. I call him he doesn't answer, for 2 hours. He said he was simply taking a drive and that his phone was off. This was my only proof and I believed his excuses since he seemed so believable and there was no other evidence. Looking back I am shocked at how naive I was, I wish i knew about this site then.

June:
One night I had an idea, I snuck downstairs, blocked her number on his phone and the next morning when i checked his blocked messages I see a message from her calling him her love. Again he made excuses that they were talking about work and it was just a flippant comment and she says my love to everytone thats just how she talks etc. I didn't believe him and I kicked him out for a few days but eventually let him come home, since everything seemed to be going so well for us, we were affectionate loving, buying a new house etc. i couldn't believe an affair could continue under those circumstances. I understood the affair when our marriage wasn't going well but when it was that didn't make sense.

September
He finally went to work for the first time since lockdown. I checked a restaurant app he used and found out he booked a reservation for lunch that same day which he didn't tell me about so i knew he was with her. This turned into a massive fight where I kicked him out .We had just bought a new home and where in the process of moving homes. He came back and confessed everything, that he had been sleeping and talking to her since February, that he tried to break it off a few times but then she would send him an email and pull on his heart strings etc and then it would start again He begged and begged, with all these words of love and devotion, that he can't live without me etc. It seemed more final that it was truly over as he returned her key with a note ending the affair and telling her that it was wrong and he loves his wife etc. and we moved to an entirely new home.

During this time he is still working for the same company and she continues emailing him business related emails that he shows me. We discussed him leaving work but financially was difficult for us. He did promise that he would never step foot into that office again.
The tears, fights and talks went on everyday. I couldn't sleep, couldn't stop talking about it, i was an emotional basket case.
He would keep on telling me how much he loved me and I'm embarrassed to say we were intimate every night. I was so confused as to how he could risk everything we had for her. Is it he respects me so little that he thinks i will just keep taking him back, is he just a spoiled immature brat, or is that he cares too much about her to let her go. Btw, he told all his friends and I pretty much told all of mine including our families when we first found out about the affair.

November
I now no longer trust him and thought i better make sure he is telling me the truth so i put a voice activated recorder in his car and again catch him calling her telling her telling her he missed her and loves her and that there will always be hope for them. We have a huge fight which turns physical and I kick him out. He stays at his moms and i have both of them calling and crying to me. His mom telling me how much he loves me and that he would never lie to her about that. He tells me he would simply die without me and begs me with what seem like heartfelt remorse and love. He tells me that it was just partly his ego and being wrapped up with something it was difficult for him to untangle himself from (affair fog). He did get attached but he would never leave.

My kids love their dad and with all the instability of covid and what has been happening in the world its difficult to voluntarily disrupt their world, leave a marriage when you still feel there is love and hope. It would be almost easier if he just left me and I had no choice in the matter. I had conditions this time and he promised he will go to AA, quit his job and make some real changes for us to move forward as a family and put this behind us.

December
Find a phone bill that shows he called her once, i confront him and he says it wasn't a personal conversation but he called her to try to get her to quit her job so he wouldn't have to. Of course that's BS because he had already talked to her about that.

April
He still has not left his job but had conversations with HR about other opportunities. In the meantime she is still reaching out to him fabricating situations at work to get in touch with him. Tells a mutual business acquaintance who knows about the affair to call him to tell him she really misses him. it pulls on his heart strings and he reaches out. I catch him emailing her asking her what she's up to etc., I find out, tell him our marriage is over, he leaves the house sleeps with her without me knowing about it. Comes home finds me crying and in a fit of passion we end sleeping together and he cries to me and tells me he went to sleep with her. He says he never wants to lie to me again and he sees the affair finally for what it is.

Since April of this year we have been in recovery, he has quit drinking and has provided his resignation (last month). I think he is finally out of the affair fog once and for all and our relationship is headed in a better direction but who knows what is in someones head or heart. I do believe that the only chance to safe this marriage is for him to completely remove himself from this job. Of course that puts all the financial respsonsibility on my shoulders. No matter what option I choose I seem to get the short end of the stick. I am left with so many mixed emotions, the embarrasment, the humiliation, living knowing he loved someone else and not knowing if loves me more or will ever love me beyond anyone else, the insecurity of all this while fighting to keep my family together, keep my kids safe and emotionally healthy given this affair, the disruption in their lifes all during COVID. There are day I don't even know how i'm still breathing. Some days I feel this is all worth it to keep our family together and that my husband truly does love and other times I don't understand what kind of love this is. I know its a process but I have never had to deal with anything more painful and difficult in my life and it doesn't seem like my husband gets it.

Joined: Nov 2010
Posts: 20,433
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Joined: Nov 2010
Posts: 20,433
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Welcome to MB and sorry for the pain that has brought you here.

The affair never ended. Every time he has any of the slightest communication the affair is back on.

You need to properly expose this affair. You need to expose the affair on the OW’s side.

Do they both still work at the same job together?


FWW/BW (me)
WH
2nd M for both
Blended Family with 7 kids between us
Too much hurt and pain on both sides that my brain hurts just thinking about it all.



Joined: Nov 2010
Posts: 20,433
Likes: 4
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Joined: Nov 2010
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Please read Exposure 101


FWW/BW (me)
WH
2nd M for both
Blended Family with 7 kids between us
Too much hurt and pain on both sides that my brain hurts just thinking about it all.



Joined: Sep 2008
Posts: 9,527
Likes: 9
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Joined: Sep 2008
Posts: 9,527
Likes: 9
Welcome to MB. I've seen you online a couple of times. If you want more responses to your thread, you need to reply to the posts that have already been made.


BW
Married 1989
His PA 2003-2006
2 kids.

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